


Statement Ends

by martivist (curlycrowley)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Apocalypse Fix-it, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23380807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curlycrowley/pseuds/martivist
Summary: "Final statement of Jonathan Sims. The Archivist. Statement given… I think it’s June? We haven’t done very well counting time since the days stopped. Summer 2019, call it that. Statement begins.We’ve found a way to send them back where they came from. All of them."Forty-some years after the apocalypse abruptly ends, the final acts of Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood come to light.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 26
Kudos: 181





	Statement Ends

“Come on, one more,” Clara said, teeth gritted. “We’ve almost got it. And— _pull!_ ”

With a resounding crash, the half-rotted boards broke free, the momentum spilling Yusef and Clara backwards onto the steps.

“Ow,” Yusef said dourly, sprawled beside her. “Next time, we bring a crowbar.”

“You expect us to be doing much more breaking and entering?” she panted, grinning.

“ _Yes,_ ” he said, “with our track record, I do. How did you even get a permit to investigate this place on our own while it’s still boarded up?”

Wordlessly, Clara stood and dusted off her clothes, carefully avoiding Yusef’s eyes.

“Clara,” he said slowly. “Clara, you _did_ get a permit, right?”

“Of course,” she said brightly, still dodging eye contact. “Hand up?”

Yusef scowled, but took the offered hand. “When we get arrested, Fanshawe, I’m saying you dragged me along under false pretenses, _because it’s true._ ”

“ _When_ we find the evidence we’re looking for,” she replied archly, hauling him to his feet, “no one will care if we had all the paperwork in order or not.”

 _The MAGNUS INSTITUTE, est. 1818,_ read the granite plaque above the entrance before them. The doors hung crooked on their hinges, and their dark wood was scarred and chipped with age as well as from the researchers’ haphazard removal of the boards. The handle on the right side door appeared to have been completely ripped out, leaving a splintery hole through to the inside. Yusef crouched by the hole and peered through.

“Anything?” Clara asked.

“Hard to say. Too dark in there, too bright out here.” He straightened and tested the unbroken door, and the handle creaked, squealed, and reluctantly gave way. The door swung outward with a juddering groan. 

Yusef reached for the torch on his belt. “Do you want to go first, or m—okay,” he said as Clara scooted past him and through the gap. 

The foyer was littered in debris—plaster powder, scattered papers, broken furniture, shards of glass. Clara was pretty sure the smashed computer lying in front of the main desk would have been dated even in 2018, but admittedly, pre-apocalyptic technology was not her research focus. In the ray of light spilling through the open door, she could see ragged cobwebs strewn in tatters across the rubble.

 _Click._ A second beam of light cut through the dusty air as Yusef walked up behind her. “Torch first, _then_ enter the spooky historical building?” he said drily. Rolling her eyes, Clara retrieved her own torch as well.

Directly across the foyer was a curved main desk, tipped onto its front but mostly intact. Wedged beneath it was a upside-down nameplate reading _Rosie Hoffman_ and a pen with a faded silk flower on top. Behind the desk were two staircases, the right leading up to the next floor, with a haphazardly dangling sign giving directions to Administration, Research Library, Accounting, and so on. The unlabeled staircase on the left led down into a basement.

“Holy shit,” Yusef rasped from a couple steps behind her. His torch was trained down a hallway to the left. Joining him, Clara saw a doorway at the end of the corridor leading into a ransacked office. The door, barely hanging on by one hinge, appeared to have once been ornately carved, but was now scarred almost beyond recognition by—

“Are those claw marks?” she whispered.

“It can’t be. It’d have to be… it’d be _huge_ ,” he hissed. “Maybe a—a knife? Someone might have done it like that on purpose.”

“Sure.” A glint on the ground caught her attention, and she picked her way down the hallway, torch trained on it. It was a brass nameplate for one _Elias Bouchard, Institute Head._ “And they just _really_ didn’t like their boss.”

The rest of the ground level didn’t yield anything else interesting, just more disheveled office supplies and a long-deserted canteen.

“Upstairs or down?” Yusef asked, shining his torch across both stairways. His light landed on a series of rotted steps and a broken railing on the one leading up. “Actually, I’m making an executive decision, we’re going down.”

Compared to the dark wood accents and marble tile of the ground floor, there was an immediate decrease in general ostentation in the basement. The path forked into three corridors, one of which just appeared to be utilities, janitorial closets, and an emergency release for the fire suppression system. Yusef and Clara split to investigate the doors at the ends of the other two halls.

“What the fuck? _‘Artefact_ Storage'?” Yusef yelped from around the corner.

“Ooh?” Clara called.

There was a series of heavy rattles and thuds. “Damn, it’s locked. The only door in this place that’s still intact, and it’s the cool one.”

Clara bit back a grin as Yusef rounded the bend to join her. 

“It’s reinforced. We’ll need something like that crowbar we _didn’t_ bring if we can’t find a key,” he grumbled, then shot her a look. “What?”

“Nothing.” She tested the handle of her own door. “This one seems to be unlocked, let’s see what we’ve got.”

The door swung in with a high squeak, revealing a room filled wall to wall with shelves and cardboard boxes. Many of the boxes had overturned and spilled their contents, which were mostly a mismatched assortment of folders, envelopes, and loose documents.

A few smaller rooms branched off to the sides, one labeled _Fragile Document Storage_ which contained, of all things, a twin-sized cot complete with linens. Another appeared to be an administrator’s office. 

Two barely-padded chairs would have sat across the desk from each other, except both were tipped and missing an assortment of legs. One of the desk drawers was pulled out and contained only a glass jar of… dust? Ash? The other had a more typical collection of pens, stationery, and a yellow pad of paper with a few seven-digit numbers scrawled across it in cramped handwriting. 

Engrossed in trying to parse out what “0113005” and “0092204” might signify, Clara almost walked right past the words printed on the office door’s window as she left the room.

_JONATHAN SIMS_

_Head Archivist_

“Yusef,” she gasped. “Yusef, I think this is it!” 

“How do you mean?” Yusef asked, looking up from the box of folders he was thumbing through.

“The Barker memoir. What was it she said?”

“‘Fuck the Magnus Institute’?”

“No—well, yes, but after that. ‘It all started and ended with the Archivist.’” She flashed her torch across the words on the glass, then started picking her way across the paper-strewn floor towards him as quickly as she could. “ _This_ is the Archivist! I think we’re in the— _WHOA shit!”_

The floor had just shifted under her foot, sending her careening to the side to stay upright.

“Oh, yeah, watch your step, the papers slide around a bit.”

“No, it—the floor moved.” She crouched down and started brushing paper and debris aside. Yusef started making his own way over, brow furrowed curiously. “It’s raised here, probably just a loose floorboard, but it didn’t quite feel like that.”

“… Fanshawe,” Yusef said haltingly, shoving a fallen shelf aside. “I think. Clara, I think it’s a hatch.” 

Clara blinked. Blinked again. A slow grin began to spread across her face.

“No way,” she whispered almost reverently.

Now uncovered, they could see exactly what she’d stepped on. A trapdoor—an _honest to god trapdoor—_ had been carefully cut to blend in seamlessly with the floorboards when closed, but one corner was propped open by a half-crunched picture frame. 

Clara tucked her fingers under the lip and raised the door with a faint creak of hinges. Below it, a stone staircase descended into the dark at a steep angle. Shining her torch down into the hole, she saw a corridor cut from the same rough, grey stone.

“Yusef, you are my best friend and my co-author and I love you,” she said, “but there is no way in hell you are stopping me from goin—”

Yusef was already swinging his legs over the ledge and lowering himself onto the stairs. 

Grinning, Clara set one of the heavier boxes on top of the trapdoor to make sure it couldn’t somehow swing closed while they were down there, then started after him. As she descended, she spared a second look for the framed picture that had led to their discovery. 

It was a photo of four people, three men and one woman, all wearing terrible holiday sweaters. Two of the men were grinning widely and possibly a little tipsily. The third, a short man with the slightest hint of an academic paunch, was scowling in a way that made Clara want to say “Bah, humbug!” on his behalf. The woman was short with bobbed hair, and was the only one of the set without glasses. Something about her seemed… _off._ Clara blinked, shook her head, and continued down the steps.

At the foot of the stairs, she found Yusef staring down the left end of the tunnel at what appeared to be a small base camp. There were three more cots, spread out enough for the pretense of personal space. A couple still had clothes and personal effects scattered around them.

“What is it with these people and sleeping in the weirdest places?” Yusef murmured in complete and utter bafflement. 

To the right, they found five small trunks and a pair of duffel bags. The bags contained mostly clothes and toiletries, though in the side pockets, Clara found a tin mug with a trace of dried tea at the bottom, two hunting knives, and a camera with a dingy rainbow stripe and the word _Polaroid_ printed along the bottom. With the camera were a few photos, each labeled _Stranger Check,_ and either _Jon_ or _Martin._

It took Clara a moment to recognize the men as two of the ones from the photo upstairs. The short, scowly man, who was apparently Jon, appeared to have aged around ten years, though now he was smiling wearily at the photographer. He’d lost any trace of softness or spare weight, and gained an alarming number of scars. The other man, Martin, was not as dramatically aged as his companion, nor quite as scarred, but he had the same dark, dark circles under his eyes, and the beginnings of wrinkles between his eyebrows.

Behind her, Yusef flipped the latch on one of the trunks with a metallic click. “Huh. Come take a look at this,” he called.

Inside were a few dozen small cases, each about six inches along. Inside each one was a rectangular plastic… thing, with two holes about the diameter of her pinky finger in the middle. Underneath the little boxes, Clara could see more manila envelopes like many of the ones they’d seen upstairs, laid flat along the bottom of the trunk.

“It’s the same in all of them,” Yusef said, continuing to pop open the other four trunks, “except in this one there’s a… not sure, some kind of media device? It’s got buttons, and there’s a note with it that says ‘play me,’ so it’s gotta either be media or a game.”

Clara squatted down beside him and carefully picked up the odd device, closing the trunk lid and resting it on top. The note with it was in the same handwriting as the numbers on the notepad in the office, if she wasn’t mistaken. In addition to play, fast forward, rewind, and record symbols, she recognized an eject symbol in the row of buttons, and cautiously pressed it. With a pop, a hatch she’d just taken for a design element opened in the top of the device, revealing its contents.

“It’s got one of the things from the cases in it, so they might be data storage of some sort.” She pushed it back down, and it clicked back into place. “I wonder…”

“This thing’s been down here for forty years, _at least_ ,” Yusef said. “There’s no way it’ll still wo—”

Clara pressed down the play button, and the machine whirred to life.

* * *

[INT. MAGNUS INSTITUTE, TUNNELS]

[CLICK]

**ARCHIVIST**

Final statement of Jonathan Sims. The Archivist. Statement given… I think it’s June? We haven’t done very well counting time since the days stopped. Summer 2019, call it that. Statement begins.

We’ve found a way to send them back where they came from. All of them, Extinction included, for all that it’s drastically grown since the last time it existed outside our world. 

They’ll still have… power here, probably. Like they did before. We’ll not be rid of them, but hopefully there will at least be some respite, time for the world to rebuild, learn how to manage them like a parasite.

To that end, since we had to come back here anyway, the only place we know of that not even the Eye can see, we have assembled all of the most pertinent recordings in the Archive, organized chronologically by the date we recorded them, and labeled according to the Entity they most concern. Take that, Gertrude Robinson.

[MARTIN LAUGHS QUIETLY]

**ARCHIVIST**

It’ll be hours of audio, and for that I suppose I apologize, but it _is_ all useful. I’ve marked a few as high priority, but please do listen to them all, you need to know what you’re up against, how they work, how they prey upon us.

And… please do not judge us too harshly, at least not at the beginning. You’ll quickly discover, we had—god, we had _no idea_ what we were dealing with, and that was by design of those who… used me to bring this about. We made, _I_ made plenty of mistakes, but—

**MARTIN**

You did the best you could. They’ll know.

**ARCHIVIST**

I… Yes, yes I did, for all that we still ended up here. And I’m sorry that for someone whose job it was to see and know… understanding came too late.

[MARTIN TUTS]

**ARCHIVIST**

At any rate. Do _not_ guard this information and hoard it away. Do not hide it where the only people aware of it are those so cut off from normal life that they lose accountability. If people most fear what they don’t understand, then _let them understand._ Let humanity guard itself against these beings, not a handful of sleep-deprived academics in a basement.

Which brings me to the main reason for this recording. You need to know how we’re going to send them back, so if this ever happens again, maybe you at least won’t waste time wallowing in confusion and misery, thinking it’s all out of your hands.

**MARTIN**

Is it still safe to…?

[THE ARCHIVIST TAKES A MOMENT TO FOCUS. THE STATIC RISES TO A HIGH PITCHED RING, AND THE ARCHIVIST’S BREATH BECOMING RAGGED. THEN THE STATIC FADES, AND HE TAKES A DEEP BREATH AND SIGHS.]

**ARCHIVIST**

I still can’t see anything in here past the trapdoor, so presumably, the Eye can’t either. And there’s nothing outside trying to come in, though there’s a Hunter patrolling about a mile toward Kensington.

**MARTIN**

All right.

**ARCHIVIST**

So. 

As you’ll find is often the case, it comes down to anchors. When I let the Powers in, I also became their anchor. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as just killing me and destroying the anchor, because there’s nothing on the other side pulling them back. They would still be here, and with slightly more freedom even than they have now. Not ideal.

There is a, a rift, a crack part way between our world and their… dimension. It was created by an attempted ritual over a decade ago, one that came closer than any other had before it because they were calling upon multiple Fears, not just one. It still failed, because they weren’t drawing on all of them together, and they didn’t have an Archivist to anchor the ritual, but. It did leave a scar on the world. A place that someone who _is_ touched by all of the Fears might… break through the rest of the way.

This crack is below 105 Hill Top Road in Oxford, though it takes some… creative navigation to get where you need to go. Martin and I have been there a few times, and we’ve got it fairly well mapped out. As soon as we finish and the coast is clear, we’re heading there to… _(tired)_ to put an end to this. 

It’s… simple enough in practice, what we’ve got planned. I enter the rift, open the door, and call them back through exactly like I did the first time. I stay there. _Anchor_ them there.

The problem is… _my_ anchor. I’ve walked in and out of enough Fears’ domains to know that my tie to this world will very dependably bring me back. _(choking up)_ And I can’t come back. Or leave a path they can follow back the other way. So my anchor…

**MARTIN**

_(softly)_ I have to come with you.

[THE ARCHIVIST SNIFFS, TRIES TO SPEAK, CAN’T]

**MARTIN**

We’ve got the other anchors taken care of. The rib will go in with him. We don’t think the tape recorders will be an issue, since those tie back to the Eye which will be coming with him, but we’re going to take one anyway. 

And then there’s… me. _(self-conscious laugh)_ I give him a head start, wait till the invocation’s almost done, and then I follow. Slip through the door with the Entities, and keep Jon anchored where he… has to be.

**ARCHIVIST**

_(hoarse)_ And then the door shuts behind us.

We don’t know what happens on the other side. How long we can expect to be alive. It may be that the other side is simply not hospitable to… human or human-adjacent life, and we die in seconds. Or we may live as long as we can keep ahead of some Entities that will probably not be terribly pleased with us. Or… like here, I may be a bit unkillable. That’s… that’s probably the worst option.

But if or when I do die there, they’ve got no anchor to pull them back here, and no path they can follow back. Nowhere to go. No more influence on this world than they had before. While I’m alive, they may even be bound enough to me that they can’t even do that much. I hope so. I want to give the world a… a reprieve.

But if it comes, it _will_ be temporary, at least probably, so the world has to be ready for them when they return. Don’t let these things get a foothold again, and for god’s sake… 

_(dry laugh)_ Don’t let anyone start grooming an Archivist again.

Statement ends.

[CLICK]

* * *

The whirr of the machine stopped, leaving Clara and Yusef in resounding silence. 

“Oh my god,” Clara murmured after a long moment. 

Beside her, Yusef scrubbed his hands over his beard, dazed. “We were right.”

Clara nodded almost frantically. “The Barker memoir, all the cultist testimonies about some kind of—of sacrifice, the shockwave around Oxford—”

“They did it,” he rasped, then turned to her, visibly pulling himself together. “Or at least, it sounds like they did, technically this only proves—”

He cut himself short as they both heard a soft, plasticky clatter and turned back to the recorder on top of the trunk. With a shout, they pitched themselves backward in a synchronized scramble, landing in a heap.

“There. Was only _one recorder_ there before. Right?” Clara demanded. “There wasn’t. There wasn’t another one there.”

“Y-yeah,” Yusef stammered, eyes fixed on the second device sitting a few inches to the right of the first. “That wasn’t there. But.” He raked his hands through his hair, eyes round and frantic. “But that’s crazy. It can’t have just. Just. Spookied itself into existence. That can’t. Um.” 

Clara picked herself up and inspected the new recorder. It was a slightly different design, and covered in more dust than the first. Brushing off the little window in the top, she saw it was also already loaded with a recording. 

“Clara!” Yusef squeaked. “Don’t! Touch. The spooky recorder!”

“It’s fine,” she murmured, distracted. “I just want… to see….”

As if compelled, her finger trailed down to the play button, and she tried to pretend it hadn’t clicked down on its own the moment she touched it.

* * *

[INT. HILL TOP ROAD, ELDRITCH RIFT BASEMENT]

[CLICK] 

[A LOW THRUM WITH A HINT OF HELLSCAPE FILLS THE SPACE, AND A QUIET, RUMBLING STATIC EMITS FROM THE TAPE RECORDER]

**MARTIN**

_(inhale)_ Tape.

**ARCHIVIST**

We need to move quickly.

**MARTIN**

You’ve got everything in your bag, the rib, the tape we brought—

**ARCHIVIST**

Martin.

**MARTIN**

Go. I’ll be right through after you.

**ARCHIVIST**

_(choked)_ Martin, I—

**MARTIN**

_(firmly)_ Jon. I’ll see you soon, all right?

**ARCHIVIST**

_(shuddering breath)_ …Right. Right. 

[A FEW STEPS, A SHUFFLE OF CLOTHES, A DEEP, MUFFLED BREATH. THEN MORE STEPS, QUICK AND RESOLUTE, WALKING AWAY FROM THE TAPE RECORDER]

**ARCHIVIST**

_(low and determined, with a hint of compulsion)_ You who watch and know and understand none.

[STATIC INCREASES]

**ARCHIVIST**

You who listen and hear and will not comprehend.

[THE SOUND OF A FOOT SCRAPING AGAINST STONE, AND THE ARCHIVIST GIVES A GRUNT OF EXERTION. WHEN HE SPEAKS AGAIN, HIS VOICE IS MUFFLED AND RECEDING FROM THE TAPE RECORDER. MARTIN TAKES A TENSE BREATH.]

**ARCHIVIST**

You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right.

[MORE LAYERS ARE ADDED TO THE STATIC, RECALLING EACH OF THE ENTITIES’ SIGNATURES, OVERLAPPING AND TANGLING AROUND EACH OTHER]

**ARCHIVIST**

_(fading out)_ Come to me in your wholeness. Come to me in… 

[THE ARCHIVIST IS NO LONGER AUDIBLE. MARTIN TAKES A DEEP, SHAKING BREATH. THEN ANOTHER.]

**MARTIN**

_(whispered)_ Come on, come on.

[THE ROOM BEGINS TO SHAKE, AND THE STATIC MIXES WITH A HELLISH WAIL AND ROAR FROM MULTIPLE, SHIFTING SOURCES.]

**MARTIN**

All right then.

[MARTIN’S FOOTSTEPS RECEDE FROM THE TAPE RECORDER, FOLLOWED BY THE SOUNDS OF HIM CLIMBING DOWN AS WELL. THE CACOPHONY SWELLS AND BOOMS, AND THE TAPE RECORDER BEGINS TO SQUEAL AND GLITCH—]

[AND THEN IT ALL FALLS SILENT. THE ONLY NOISE IS COMPLETELY MUNDANE ROOM TONE, AND THE QUIET WHIR OF THE TAPE RECORDER. IT CONTINUES TO RUN FOR A FEW MOMENTS, AND THEN]

[CLICK]

* * *

The silence stretched on longer after the machine whirred to a stop. Their eyes were wet as they stared at each other in mute stupefaction. 

“That was real,” Yusef finally said quietly. “That was the end.”

Clara laced her trembling fingers behind her neck. “Just like that,” she whispered. “Just like that, and it was….” She sniffed, then scrambled back to the trunk, setting the recorders carefully to the side and throwing the lid open. 

“They said these were for us, to listen to these so we knew—” Looking closer at the little cases, she saw they were numbered, and quickly found 001. She also found an empty case already labeled _200 Final Statement._ She popped out the first recording and carefully put it away, then slotted 001 inside and pressed play.

* * *

[INT. MAGNUS INSTITUTE, ARCHIVIST’S OFFICE]

[CLICK]

**ARCHIVIST**

Test, test. Test. One, two, three. Right. _(clears throat)_ My name is Jonathan Sims. I work for the Magnus Institute, London, an organization dedicated to academic research into the esoteric and the paranormal. The head of the Institute, Mr. Elias Bouchard, has….

* * *

It was definitely the same voice, albeit colder and more formal than they’d heard on the previous two tapes, not unlike some of their older fellow researchers who had somehow survived the apocalypse with their scholastic superiority complex intact. Jon continued in a long, somewhat rambling introduction, punctuated by sneering remarks about the former Archivist and, bizarrely, a Martin that Clara took to be the same as from the later tapes.

“I think I liked him better when he was saving the world,” Yusef muttered.

“Shh!” Clara scolded, completely absorbed, consuming each word like she was starving. On the recording, Jon concluded his introduction.

* * *

**ARCHIVIST**

Statement of Nathan Watts, regarding an encounter on Old Fishmarket Close, Edinburgh. Original statement given April 22nd 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

**Author's Note:**

> Tremendous thanks to [amerande](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amerande/pseuds/amerande), who is a fantastic beta reader, sounding board, and friend. 
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr [@martivist](https://martivist.tumblr.com/). I hope you enjoyed this fic, would love to hear your thoughts, and wish you health and luck as Season 5 begins later this week. Thank you for reading!


End file.
